Proven by Testing

Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Aerial picture of the house that exploded

    On Monday, 22 November 2021 just before 9:30 p.m., I was preparing to got to bed in my old rectory at St. Pius X parish.  All of the sudden I saw a large flame down the road, felt the house shake, and heard a loud boom.  The house not even a block away from the rectory had exploded from (we later learned) a natural gas leak from a faultily-installed appliance.  
    As a chaplain with the Michigan State Police, much of my training has been for emergency situations.  But, up to that point, I had never been on my own in the case of a real emergency.  I always had Troopers who would take the lead, and I would try to assist them with what they said I needed to do.  
    After I saw, felt, and heard the house explode, I said, “Lord, have mercy!”, called 911 to give any information I had, and then rushed to get my State Police jacket on, find my flashlight, and run to see what had happened.  As the fire engines from Flint Fire Department started to arrive on scene, I then started directing traffic so that emergency vehicles could get access to the scene.
    Often, we don’t know what we will do unless we are tested.  If we are wise, we make plans for disasters, or maybe we just daydream about scenarios where we are the hero, but until that situation arises in our life, it’s just theory.  When life throws a situation at us where we need to react, we find out if our planning or our daydreaming was just wishful thinking, or if we really could respond in a heroic way to a life-changing event.
    The same is true in our faith life.  In order to find out our true physical strength, we have to test our muscles and put them under pressure.  In order to find out our true spiritual strength, and what virtues we have, by the grace of God, cultivated in our life, we have to be in situations where we can choose virtue or we can choose vice.  It doesn’t matter if we think we are a saint and we would never choose evil.  Only when we are in a situation when we can choose either to do good or to do evil do we really learn how much we value following God’s way rather than our own, or the way of the world.  
    Take, for example, being put into a situation where we have done something wrong, maybe even something small, but someone notices and asks us if we are responsible.  Maybe we even have friends around us to add to the situation with some peer pressure.  When asked if we did something wrong, would we tell the truth, or would we lie?  The lie may seem easier, and may, whether for a short or even a long time, keep us out of trouble.  But we know that lying is wrong, a sin against God who is truth.  So what do we do?  It is so easy to fold under the pressure, and give in to what we think will be easier and cause less punishment for us.  Maybe we even convince ourselves that it’s not that bad, or that we can do so much more good if we are allowed to lie in just this one case.  But, of course, if we start to lie now, we are more likely to lie later.  And a basic principle of morality is that you cannot do evil to achieve a good: it makes the whole scenario evil.
    In the upcoming forty days of Lent, we will test our spiritual muscles out again.  Our acts of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving (or the lack thereof) will tell us exactly what kind of fruit our life of grace has borne thus far.  When faced with a spiritual struggle, our true mettle comes out, what we are made of, and we learn where we need to grow in following Christ.  God reveals to us our shortcomings, not to beat us up with them, but to help us to know the ways in which we need to open ourselves to His grace to be better followers of Christ.  God gives us this special time to turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel so that we can rejoice even more in the new life that Christ won by His Passion, Death, and Resurrection, and live that new life ourselves.
    Our catechumens who will be sent today by us to the Rite of Election, will also be tested in these weeks of Lent.  In the scrutinies, the Church will ask them to review their own life and put behind them all that does not conform to Christ.  They will reflect on how much their thirst for the new life Christ gives; on the areas of their life in which they are blind to sin; on the death that sin has caused in their lives.  But it won’t end there, just as Good Friday is not the end of the story.
    Because God wants to help us through these trials.  We cannot grow in holiness on our own.  Without God’s grace, we have no chance to live a holy life.  So as we grow in awareness through our trials, don’t be afraid to call upon God and ask for the help that we each need to live the new life of Christ.
    Until we are tested, we don’t really know how we would react.  May these upcoming Lenten days test us, show us our shortcomings, and open us to the grace and mercy of God who strengthens us to follow Christ on his pilgrimage through the desert.  May we allow God’s grace to make us bear good fruit as we remove the splinters of sin from our lives. 

Death and Him that Conquered It

 Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    As we enter into Lent this Wednesday, we enter into a time of penance.  We begin our observance of Lent with the words, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  And throughout Lent we give things up in order to die to our will.  We fast, we abstain, and we enter into a time of making do with less.  Why?  Why all this negation?
    Our little sacrifices are meant to remind us of the one big sacrifice that Christ underwent for our salvation.  But do we really understand salvation?  Do we know from what we were saved?  Do we want to be saved daily?
    St. Paul talks about that which is corruptible and that which is mortal, and talks about death and sin.  This is something that we don’t talk about a lot in modern Catholicism, but it’s important.  Because if we don’t understand the sorry state we were and can be in, then we don’t appreciate the gift of incorruptibility, immortality, and victory that our Lord Jesus Christ won for us.
    We have certainly grown up in a society that says that everyone is basically good, and everything is basically alright.  That’s one view of the world, but it’s not the Catholic, Christian, or Jewish worldview.  Yes, God created all things good, as we heard in Genesis, but through Adam and Eve’s sin, everything in creation was corrupted.  Death entered the world, and not simply the death that signals the end of life, but eternal death, eternal separation from God.  
    And that was not simply for Adam and Eve, it was for everyone who came forth from them, that is, everyone.  We don’t enter into this world on the path to heaven; we enter this world on a path to hell, because we are separated from God.  We belong to sin, and sin means death, which is the opposite of God, who is Life.  All we can produce is bad fruit.  Even the best of us–Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah–were all still bound in sin and could not enter into eternal life, no matter how good a life they lived.
    This is the victory that St. Paul was talking about for death.  Death claimed every person of the human race before the Incarnation.  It was as if everyone was in a prison, by humanity’s own making, and the warden was the devil.  So many came so close to getting out, only to be dragged back in.  

    But, the victory of Christ was the opening of the prison gates by one who died, but who was not under its penalty.  Christ knew no sin, and yet suffered the penalty of sin so that we would not have to.  He was able to transform the bad fruit into good fruit.  He freed us from sin and death.  And He did this by His Death and Resurrection.  And He imparts that Death and Resurrection to us through Baptism, and through all the Sacraments, especially the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist.  
    So without Baptism, without the Death and Resurrection of Christ applied for us and accepted by us, we are still in that prison; we are still subject to eternal death.  Without Christ, nothing we do is meritorious and helping us get to heaven.  With Christ, even the smallest sacrifices that we make help us to accept eternal salvation that Christ won for us.
    But while Baptism frees us from the prison, we can, by our decisions, freely walk back in.  We would consider it crazy for a prisoner who was just released from prison to walk right back and close the cell door on him or herself.  But that is what we do when we sin.  
    And so, as we get ready for Lent, we do those small sacrifices that show Christ that we are grateful, but we are also training ourselves not to turn back to sin.  The things that we give up, the extra penances and charitable works that we do are meant to help us be closer to Christ and keep us free with Him.  We give up stuff that reminds us of how bad prison is, so that when we go throughout our day we reject the path back into prison and accept the freedom that Christ wants for us.  
    So, as we prepare for the beginning of Lent on Wednesday, we are not preparing for a Catholic diet.  We are not preparing for a random, 40-day period where we give up stuff just because it’s what we’ve always done.  We are not preparing simply for a season.  We are preparing ourselves to continue in the freedom that we received in Baptism and that we receive in the Eucharist and through the other sacraments we have received.  We are preparing ourselves to recognize and resist the ways in which Satan seduces us to come back to his prison and be his slaves.  We are preparing ourselves to stay close to Christ and the victory He won, so that, in Christ, we can say, “Where, O death, is your victory?  Where, O death, is your sting?”  And “thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ,” whom we will have the opportunity to worthily receive as we continue towards the climax of the Mass, the consecration and reception of the Eucharist. 

Our First and Most Important Friend

 Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Some of the greatest blessings in life are friends.  They are there for you to share in your joys and comfort you in sorrow.  The best friends help you to be the best version of yourself, which is sometimes easy, and sometimes a bit painful.  St. Augustine of Hippo had a beautiful reflection on friendship from his book The Confessions:
 

Friendship had other attractions which were very important to me – we could talk and laugh – help each other in small ways – we enjoyed doing lots of things together – reading some book – going somewhere – sometimes we would be very serious together – sometimes we were able to act the fool together.  Sometimes when we argued with each other it was not a bitter argument but like the kind of argument you might have with yourself.  In fact, sometimes the argument was the kind only friends can have when they have some disagreement – it sometimes made our usual harmony more meaningful.  Each of us had something to learn from each other and something to teach in return.  If someone was absent for some time they were missed and we welcomed them back warmly.

Maybe as I read St. Augustine’s description, your own memories with friends came to your mind, and the good and difficult times you made it through.
    But, as good as friendship is (and St. Thomas Aquinas calls friendship one of the highest goods on earth), we hear a very different message from the Prophet Jeremiah today as he proclaims, “Thus says the Lord: Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings, who seeks his strength in flesh, whose heart turns away from the Lord.”  Did St. Augustine and St. Thomas decide that Jeremiah got God’s message wrong?  Does God not want us to have friends?  
    Friendship is a gift from God, and in fact, Jesus calls tells the apostles, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command you.  I no longer call you slaves…I have called you friends.”  So maybe Jeremiah did get it wrong!  God seems to encourage friendship, which necessarily entails trust in other humans.
    Of course, there’s a way to see this to brings together Jeremiah and Jesus, and Scripture and St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas.  As with everything, it deals with the proper ordering of goods.  Ordering good things is one of the harder tasks in life, because we don’t have to reject what is evil, but decide which good is a higher good than another.
    As good as friendship with our fellow human beings is, our friendship with God is even more important.  And this is the message that Jeremiah is getting at in the first reading.  If all we do is trust in our fellow man, then we’re missing out, and in a great way!  There are things that only a human friend is going to accomplish (short of a miracle): helping you work on your house, throwing a birthday party, and the like.  And so it can be very natural in any need to turn to a friend to find comfort or to rejoice.  But our human friends are limited by time and space, whereas God is not.  So to neglect going to God first is to wrongly order our loves.  And, ironically, the Psalmist says, “Unless the Lord build the house, in vain do the builders labor.”  And St. Paul tells us to rejoice in the Lord always.  So even with fixing up a house, or throwing a party, we should start by turning to the Lord.  We may still need friends to accomplish the manual labor, but unless that effort is done according to the will of God, it won’t be as successful as it could be, and may even be a disaster.  
    In my own life, the temptation to turn to friends first is most evident and most seductive when I’m feeling down.  Again, there’s nothing wrong with turning to a friend to find some comfort and consolation.  But my friend, as well as he knows me, does not know me as well as God does.  And my friend cannot see how certain things are meant to happen in the grand scheme of things.  So his advice is going to be limited by whatever finiteness he has, whereas God is infinite, and is limited by no external factors.  When I need a friend to lean on, God wants me to turn to Him first.  I might still turn to my human friends, but God gets first billing, or at least, that’s what he deserves and that’s what will help us the most.  
    Relying on God first is precisely the principle behind all of the Beatitudes that we heard today in the Gospel.  The poor, the hungry, those who weep, and those who are hated do not seem to be blessed.  But they have to rely on God first, and when you get that right, everything else can be put into its proper place.  Those who are blessed are those who know that they need God, first and foremost.  Those who are cursed are those who think they can get by on their own, and do not need God.  Why?  Because God has made the world contingent on Him and His will, and truly to succeed in life means acknowledging and living by that reality.  We may not always like it, but that’s the way the world works.  In the same way, we have this force called gravity.  We may not always like it, but if we try to live as if gravity didn’t exist, eventually we get to a place where gravity imposes itself on us, whether we like it or not, and reminds us that we have to live according to that force.  
    Friendship is a great gift.  “There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship,” wrote St. Thomas Aquinas.  “Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.”  But, friendship with God, and relying on Him first is the key to any true friendship, and not only natural but supernatural friendship.  May we not only develop our friendships on earth, but also the friendship that will last into eternity: our friendship with God.

Catholic Identity

Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

A parishioner was recently asking me about my work with the Michigan State Police.  In the midst of the conversation, I started to talk about how, for law enforcement officers in general, their work is their life.  That’s not to say they don’t have hobbies outside of work, but simply that their work changes who they are, how they see people, and how they act.  One example: if a cop goes out to eat, even off duty, he or she almost always will sit facing the entrance, if at all possible, to see what’s going on, who’s coming in, etc.  The same could be said for being a mother: it changes how you see things, and you’re always a mom, even if the child doesn’t necessarily belong to you.  And I’m sure there are others whose identity changes how they relate to the world they encounter each day.

I bring this up because the same should be able to be said about us as Catholics, as followers of Jesus.  Being Catholic is not a matter of belonging to an ancient club, with dues, with old rituals, with hierarchy, that provides certain privileges.  Being Catholic is not only about coming to Mass one day each week.  Being Catholic is, as St. Paul says in his letter to the Philippians, having the same attitude as Christ.  And when we have that same attitude, it changes everything we do.

A statue of King David
from Jerusalem

Even before Jesus, we can see what that looks like in our first reading.  David had been anointed by the Prophet Samuel to take over for King Saul after Saul was dead.  David’s fame and power kept growing, while King Saul’s fame and power was waning (remember that he had disobeyed the Lord, which is why the Lord’s favor left him).  Because of this, King Saul wanted to kill David, to get rid of his rival.  So David had to flee.  But King Saul pursued David.  And that’s where our first reading comes in today.  David is hiding from King Saul, but finds him asleep, along with all of his men.  David could have killed King Saul (Saul’s spear was in the ground next to King Saul’s head), but didn’t.  David’s advisor, Abishai, told David to kill King Saul, so that he could be king instead.  But David rejected that advice, and did no harm to the king that the Lord had anointed.  

That course of action makes no sense outside of faith in God.  If you come upon a man who is hunting you, who is bent on your destruction, and you have the chance to take him out, that is the best thing to do.  David could have become king and ruled over all Israel.  But it was not God’s will, so David did not do it, even though, from the wisdom of the world, it would have ensured success.

Jesus, the Son of David, tells us in the Gospel: 

“love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.  […] Give to everyone who asks of you….Do to others as you would have them do to you….Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful….Stop judging…[s]top condemning…[f]orgive.”

That’s not the way to make it in a cutthroat world, the world in which Jesus lived, the world in which we live.  That’s not the smartest plan for someone who wants to be powerful, in control, determining his own destiny.  But that’s the attitude of Christ.

Being Catholic is about living in our daily circumstances like Jesus would live.  It means loving enemies, praying for those who hurt us, being generous with our material goods, being merciful.  Those actions, and everything that Jesus teaches us, is meant to become a part of us, so that, again paraphrasing St. Paul, it is not longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us.  Being Catholic is about becoming like Jesus, not so that we can earn God’s love, but as a result of God’s love.  Being Catholic should be in us as a part of who we are, which changes who we are, how we see people, how we act.   

When we approach people, we should try to see a person created in the image and likeness of God, and love them.  When we are struggling with a co-worker or a family member, our first instinct should be to pray for that person.  When we’re at the grocery or department store, or dealing with customer service, we should treat them as we would want to be treated.  When someone wrongs us, we should try to extend mercy to them, just as our heavenly Father extends mercy to us.  All of those things should flow from us because we are followers of Jesus, because we are Catholic.  Even more to the core of who we are than a job; even more to the core of who we are as a mother or father, we are followers of Jesus, and that should impact the way we live.  

Imagine for a second that our actions flowed from our identity as sons and daughters in the Son of God.  Imagine how different our world would be if we stopped acting out of a worldly mindset where we are in competition with each other for every last scrap, and where if we don’t take someone else down, that they could take us down.  Imagine if we had the same attitude as Christ.